Skeletal animation in embodied agents

An Actuation System for animating a Virtual Character or Digital Entity comprising:

• a processor;
• a memory communicatively coupled to the processor, wherein the memory stores:
• values defining a plurality of Joints associated with a Skeleton of the Virtual Character or Digital Entity, and
• at least one Actuation Unit Descriptor defining respective Skeletal Poses with respect to a first Skeletal Pose;
• and
• program instructions stored in the memory and that, upon execution by the processor, cause the processor to:
• drive the Actuation Unit Descriptor using Rotation Parameters and one or more of the Joints of the Skeleton using corresponding Actuation Unit Descriptors multiplied by corresponding Activation Weights.

A method of generating an animation of a Skeleton of a Virtual Character or Digital Entity comprising:

• defining a plurality of Actuation Unit Descriptors as animation controls configured to change rotation and/or translation values of one or more Joints of the Skeleton;
• converting the plurality of Actuation Unit Descriptors into Rotation Parameters;
• using the Rotation Parameters to blend and convert two or more input animations to an Actuation Unit Descriptor space to generate one or more animations;
• and
• composing and playing back the one or more animations on a joint-driven skeleton using any rotation representation.

A method for animating arm reaching in a Virtual Character or Digital Entity comprising:

• receiving a desired location of an end effector of an arm of a Virtual Character or Digital Entity in a parameter space;
• retrieving example poses, each associated with a coordinate of an end effector and pose Actuation Unit Descriptors;
• generating interpolated poses by interpolating poses using the example poses as interpolation nodes, wherein interpolation is performed in parameter space with a coordinate of an end effector as a parameter and pose Actuation Unit Descriptors as values;
• and
• animating the arm reaching using the interpolated poses.